1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to communications; more particularly, the redirection of mobile station""s communications.
2. Description of the Prior Art
With the Global Service Redirection mechanism currently defined in IS-95B (the telecommunications standard IS95B is hereby incorporated by reference), a base station can redirect mobile stations of the selected subscriber Access Control Overload class (ACCOLC) or classes to a specific CDMA carrier or the analog system. This mechanism can be used by service providers to control CDMA subscriber access to their system for some special situations, for example when deploying a new system and during potential system overload situations.
As more CDMA protocols are being developed, the current Global Service Redirection mechanism is insufficient to meet the need of those service providers who want to control global subscriber access effectively with some new attributes.
The present invention provides, in addition to ACCOLC, the use two new attributes for Global Service Redirection, which are mobile station protocol revision (MOB_P_REV) and desired service type (specifically data, voice, and SMS, etc), without excluding other potential attributes.
Hence, Global Service Redirection mechanism becomes more selective, allowing service provider, for instance, to instruct only CDMA2000 (MOB_P_REV=6) mobiles to access specific carrier that is deployed to support advanced services known as 3G services. The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) CDMA2000 (MOB_P_REV=6) standard is hereby incorporated by reference.
In another embodiment, data-only CDMA2000 mobiles are instructed to access specific carrier that is optimized to support high speed data services.
In yet another embodiment, pre-CDMA2000 mobiles (MOB_P_REV less than 6) are redirected by a conventional Global Service Redirection Message to another carrier, while CDMA2000 mobiles (MOB_P_REV= greater than 6) are instructed to ignore this redirection.
In an embodiment used for a test deployment application, mobile stations of specific Access Overload Class (ACCOLC) corresponding to a particular revision level (MOB_P_REV) can be redirected to a carrier that supports the test.